Tag: pop culture

Another Sunday Funday in Los Angeles

This past Sunday we headed up to Van Nuys for the annual Best of France and Italy car show. This show was basically Ed’s dream – it featured French and Italian cars mostly from the 1950s-1980s. It was not your typical car show! I have learned quite a bit through osmosis just by being with Ed for so long – so I must admit, I really enjoyed it too! Many of the cars you just wouldn’t see here in the States, and we were impressed by the variety and condition of the ones on display!


This little number was one of our favorites – a 70s model Citroen DS21! Ed and & I LOVE these cars. They look so space-age and so unique. Just a bonus that this car was red!

The DS models have these really cool lights on the back and just don’t look like any other car! We’d love to own one, but they are really tough to find stateside, and they are waaay out of the price range!

This is a fun 60s era ad for the Citroen – so space-age!
citroen2

Some other favorites were this Caravelle Convertible …

And, who could forget the Renault “Le Car”?!?

Then, as if Ed’s morning couldn’t get any better, he unexpectedly spotted his favorite car ever – an East German communist Trabant! These are extremely rare and even more random – this car had Hungarian plates!

Ed stands happily by the Trabi

After leaving Van Nuys, we decided to do something completely different – we headed down to Culver City to see Sanrio’s Three Apples art exhibition, which was celebrating 35 years of Hello Kitty!

three_apples_top

Hello Kitty was such a staple for girls in my generation growing up … the pencil cases, stickers, lip gloss, you name it – every little girl coveted their Hello Kitty stuff, and she’s certainly maintained her staying power through the ages! Three Apples was cool because in addition to showcasing TONS of HK merchandise throughout the years, they also had a lot of favorite low-brow artists showing work inspired by HK. The space was impressive and we had an awesome time!

Here are a few favorite art pieces from the show:

(L): Mermaid w/Hello Kitty by Gary Baseman, (R): Awesome Velvet Hello Kitty Elvis!


Tara McPherson’s HK piece


Loved the colors and “classical” twist to this one.


Crazy Lady Gaga Hello Kitty Portraits!


A darker side to HK

As I mentioned earlier, the show also did an entire product retrospective. All the stuff they had there was amazing! Our pictures don’t really do it justice – there were entire rooms just filled to the brim with stuff – but here are a few:

Notice the dress made of stuffed HK’s!


An obsolete “plug in” phone I would’ve loved as a kid! And, lots of HK sweet treats.

Just when our day couldn’t have possibly gotten more fun, we had dinner plans with our dear friends Britt & Wade. Wade was making us dinner – and when he cooks, its ALWAYS amazing! He ended up serving a beautiful salad and the tastiest beef stew we’d ever had!

Salad with greens, avocado, yellow and red tomatoes, onions and toasted walnuts = YUM!


An amazing Beef Stew to welcome the fall – who cares if it was 90 degrees that day? :)

And that concludes another Sunday Fun Day!

Obama lands in Long Beach!

Carrie and I had heard in the news yesterday that Obama was coming to Southern California today. This morning, I heard that Air Force One was going to be landing at the Long Beach airport! As fortune would have it, I had to be at Toyota HQ in Torrance at 2 today to pick up a test car, and Obama was to land at 3! Talk about the stars being aligned.


It was a truly festive scene there. There were many places one could watch from; I chose the airport fire station parking lot, which was packed but had a great view of the runway.


And there he is…a little speck on the horizon.


Touching down!


And a nice landing amidst deafening cheers, whistles, and applause.

Talk about brightening your day! See all of the pics by clicking below.

Obama lands in Long Beach

A Day in Little Tokyo

Today was a fun filled day of art and Japanese wackiness. We headed up to Little Tokyo to catch the amazing Murakami exhibit at MOCA and then on to the Giant Robot retrospective at the Japanese American National Museum. Both were fantastic and made us want to reach our goal to visit Japan sooner than later!


First things first – Murakami. Nothing can be wackier, and nothing made us happier than to see this work being featured at MOCA. The trademark Japanese anime style has infiltrated our culture and shaken things up as much today as all of the big time artists in the pop art movement did in the ’60s. Murakami’s world is a different world alright, and we like it. You feel like a child, but at times the subject matter is very adult. You can’t take pictures in the museum, but we managed to find a few out there on the good ol’ world wide web.




The space was so transformed into this crazy land that the walls in some areas were covered in eyeballs – or flowers – and bright splashes of color were everywhere. Then of course there were the sculpture pieces that looked like space age plastic cartoon characters that were adorable and disturbing all at the same time.

We loved it!

After taking in all of the Murakami madness, we decided to stop by Starbucks – after all, the red cups are here, and Carrie couldn’t be happier!

Next up was the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). We hadn’t been there before, and were glad to finally visit. Giant Robot is a magazine that we’re both big fans of. Basically, it’s an artsy magazine featuring work by edgy artists and art school students that features hip pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek humor. It’s super cool and pure eye candy to look at.

The art was awesome and we were excited that they let us take a few pictures inside.



JANM also has another really interesting exhibit going on at the moment called Common Ground and it has tons of photos, posters and objects telling the story of 130 years of Japanese American history. It was pretty amazing and we both were pretty moved by it.

As it turns out, the museum also has a super cool gift store and we know that one day in the future when there is a cool little baby Kim, we will have to buy this shirt:

All in all, it was an inspiring day – and we say if you haven’t gone out and caught an art exhibition lately – get out there and see something!

Pretty Smart!

Ed’s loved the little Smart car that’s been available in Europe for years and has been extremely excited about the Smart finally coming to the US soon. Anyways, the day draws nearer and they’ve set up a temporary space in Venice that showcases the car in this amazing modern house on Abbot Kinney. We don’t know what blew us away more…the house or the car!


The Smart House is located at 1319 Abbot-Kinney. It’s three stories, very modern and very open. There was a Smart downstairs (and ones you could actually drive out in back…more on that later). We were both dying over the honeycomb screen and chairs.

The next two floors included the main living room and kitchen, as well as additional chill areas. All in white!

And finally, the best looking espresso machine ever…

The space is being used as a Smart art gallery as well. Lots of cool and witty pieces, mostly Smart related.

However – on to the car itself. It’s tiny and meant for really congested urban areas. You see them everywhere in European cities. It’s no “toy” car though…Smart is a sub-brand of Mercedes-Benz and is meant to survive crashes as well as any normal-sized car. Anyways, it was smart (knee slapper, we know) to locate this temporary Smart space in Venice on Abbot Kinney…one of the most congested and hip areas of LA.

The Smart is not only efficient (averages well over 40mpg), but it’s a very fashionable and stylish little piece, with body panels that are removable should you want to change colors on a whim. And inside, you’re met with cool shapes and fabric patterns, and it’s huge given the tiny exterior. Basically, this is a car as a fashion accessory as much as it’s a mode of transportation.

Driving it shows it’s a real car…it doesn’t feel unsafe and in fact feels particularly solid. Here’s Ed about to take it for a spin.

Anyways, we hope this car does well. We like everything the car stands for – the efficiency, frugality, and high style. Heck, it’s the only car that has a permanent place in MoMA’s collection for its design! And props to the Smart House too – the presentation of it all totally successfully communicated the Smart “lifestyle”. For more modern greatness, see the pics here.

And, another draw is you might even have a celebrity sighting while you’re there like we did…Jessica Biel was there today checking out the Smart House with a few sidekicks. Go check it out!